BOTWT 3 21

BEST OF THE WEB TODAY
 
With Extreme Prejudice
 
By JAMES TARANTO
 
March 21, 2008
 
Remember John Kerry? He was the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, lauded by his supporters for his intellect and his nuance, as compared with the simpleminded George W. Bush. Having lost the election, he decided to sit out the 2008 contest. He recently endorsed Barack Obama, and earlier this week he sat down with the editorial board of the Standard-Times (New Bedford, Mass.) to make the case for his candidate.
 
It's a real jaw-dropper. ABC News's Jake Tapper sums it up:Kerry said that a President Obama would help the US, in relations with Muslim countries, "in some cases go around their dictator leaders to the people and inspire the people in ways that we can't otherwise.""He has the ability to help us bridge the divide of religious extremism," Kerry said. "To maybe even give power to moderate Islam to be able to stand up against this radical misinterpretation of a legitimate religion."Kerry was asked what gives Obama that credibility."Because he's African-American. Because he's a black man. Who has come from a place of oppression and repression through the years in our own country."An African-American president would be "a symbol of empowerment" for those who have been disenfranchised around the world, Kerry said, "an important lesson for America to show Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, other places in the world where disenfranchised people don't get anything."
 
One obvious question: What do the events of this week, involving Obama's own church, tell us about his ability to "stand up against" a "radical misinterpretation of a legitimate religion"? Nothing very encouraging in this columnist's view, but many observers view Obama much more charitably in this regard than we do.
 
What is really striking about Kerry's case for Obama, though, is that it rests on what may be the crudest stereotyping we have ever observed. Commentary's Abe Greenwald has a chuckle over Kerry's racial stereotyping of Obama:Where is this "place of oppression and repression" in which Obama has suffered "through the years"? Hawaii? Harvard? The Senate? We should find out immediately and do something about this horrific crisis.
 
But Kerry isn't just stereotyping blacks. He is stereotyping Muslims too. And he is drawing an equivalence between American blacks, a racial minority in one country, and Middle Eastern Muslims, a religious majority in a whole region.
 
Never mind that, as Greenwald points out, "Arab Muslims [are] none too happy with their black countrymen in northern Africa." Never mind that in some African countries, notably Sudan and Mauritania, Arab Muslims still enslave blacks.
 
To Kerry, it seems, all "oppressed peoples" look alike. The man has all the intellectual subtlety of a third-rate ethnic studies professor.
 
Obama's Mideast Gaffe
From the Chicago Tribune:[Barack] Obama teased [John] McCain, a supporter of the war, for a mix-up in the Middle East Tuesday in which the Arizona senator said several times that Iran was providing support to al Qaeda in Iraq, one of the Sunni insurgent groups there. . . ."Just yesterday, we heard Sen. McCain confuse Sunni and Shia, Iran and al Qaeda," Obama said. "Maybe that is why he voted to go to war with a country that had no al Qaeda ties. Maybe that is why he completely fails to understand that the war in Iraq has done more to embolden America's enemies than any strategic choice that we have made in decades."
 
Since Obama is going around teasing McCain, we thought we should not let an Obama "gaffe," from his "major speech on race," go unremarked. In describing the comments of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright that he found unacceptable, Obama said this:They expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country--a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America, a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.
 
To characterize the conflicts in the Middle East as "emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam" is only a partial truth. In fact, Arab states have sought Israel's destruction since its creation; and many of Israel's enemies over the years--Nasser's Egypt, Assad's Syria, Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Yasser Arafat's PLO--have adhered to secular ideologies.
 
It is true that the growth of radical Islam over the past 30 years has given anti-Israel belligerents a more religious consistency. For example, Hamas, which now controls the Gaza strip, from which it frequently fires rockets at civilians in southern Israel, is an Islamist group.
 
The other day blogger Tom Blumer reported that Obama's "spiritual mentor," Jeremiah Wright, had reprinted in his church bulletin an op-ed piece by Hamas's Mousa Abu Marzook under the headline "A Fresh View of the Palestinian Struggle."
 
Uh-oh, more trouble for Obama? Don't worry. Hamas is a Sunni fundamentalist group. It receives support from Iran. But Iran is Shiite. Therefore Hamas does not exist. Take that, John McCain.
 
Whither Mrs. Clinton?
Oh, by the way, who is going to be the Democratic nominee? Hillary Clinton's victories in the Ohio and Texas primary, followed by Barack Obama's trouble with his spiritual mentor, give reason to think that she could still pull it out. This week she's been doing better in polls in states with forthcoming contests, including Pennsylvania, where she had been expected to win, and North Carolina, where she hadn't.
 
But Obama still has the lead, and according to Slate's Delegate Calculator, Mrs. Clinton would need to win at least 64% of remaining pledged delegates (those selected by voters in primaries and caucuses) in order to take the pledged delegate lead. That means the contest is almost certain to be decided by superdelegates, party and elected officials who automatically have seats at the convention and are free to vote however they please.
 
You might think the superdelegates would be leaning toward Mrs. Clinton right now, concerned as to whether Obama is electable, now that the Wright fiasco has transformed him into the candidate of "race," an unpopular subject for most voters.
 
But Obama's speech this week puts those superdelegates in an awkward position. Can they really reject Obama for staking out a position on race that is, at least by left-liberal lights, about as thoughtful and conciliatory as one could ever hope for? The danger for the Democratic Party is that if the superdelegates turn against Obama over this, it will appear as if they are doing so because he is black.
 
Another plus for Obama--for now, anyway--is that there doesn't seem to be a solution in the offing for the Michigan and Florida problem. The party stripped those two states of their convention delegates because they held their primaries earlier than party rules allowed. Mrs. Clinton campaigned in both states anyway, and won the primaries, while Obama (and other, now-forgotten candidates) stayed away. The New York Sun reports that Mrs. Clinton seems to have blown it:In a little-noticed comment that may have conflated wish with reality, the former first lady's top adviser on delegate issues, Harold Ickes, told reporters on Tuesday, "She has urged for weeks now that there should be reruns of those primaries."In fact, Mrs. Clinton and her campaign publicly endorsed revotes in both states on March 12, only six days before Mr. Ickes and the rest of the Clinton crew began taunting Mr. Obama for dragging his feet in working out a compromise.For more than six weeks, beginning four days before the January 29 primary in Florida, Mrs. Clinton's camp took the inflexible position that the delegates from the Florida and Michigan primaries should be selected and seated based solely on the results of those votes, despite the fact there was virtually no campaigning in either state and Mr. Obama and most other Democrats had pulled their names from the Michigan ballot. That position never found traction with Democratic leaders, even those friendly to Mrs. Clinton, in part because it gave too much weight to her "victories" in those states and in part because her own backers, such as Mr. Ickes, voted for the sanctions against states that jumped the calendar. "This is just so nakedly self-serving," a Democratic political consultant who said he voted for Mrs. Clinton, Garry South, said. "I just think it's too clever by half."
 
It now appears to be too late to schedule new votes. It should be noted that Obama's approach to these two states is no less cynical than Mrs. Clinton's, as Britain's Press Association reports:Splitting Michigan's delegates between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton would be a fair way of resolving the dispute over whether to seat the delegates at the Democratic Party's national convention, the Obama campaign said.
 
Clinton spokesman Phil Singer said, rightly: "Michigan is populated by people, not numbers, and those people need to have their voices heard in this process."
 
What we may end up with, then, is Obama getting the nomination thanks to his staking out a position on race that his party cannot walk away from, but that voters certainly can--and being further handicapped in November by his party's having snubbed the voters of two crucial states.
 
Passport Control
"State Department employees snooped through the passport files of three presidential candidates--Sens. Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain--and the department's inspector general is investigating," the Associated Press reports:State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the violations of McCain and Clinton's passport files were not discovered until Friday, after officials were made aware of the unauthorized access of Obama's records and a separate search was conducted.The incidents raise questions as to whether the information was accessed for political purposes and why two contractors involved in the Obama search were dismissed before investigators had a chance to interview them. It recalled an incident in 1992, when a Republican political appointee at the State Department was demoted over a search of presidential candidate Bill Clinton's passport records. At the time, Clinton was challenging President George H.W. Bush.
 
This puzzled us in 1992, and it puzzles us now. Assuming that this snooping into passport files is politically motivated, what exactly is it that the snoopers are supposed to be looking for? And why is it considered an outrageous invasion of privacy to look at a candidate's passport files on the one hand, while on the other those seeking the presidency are expected to lay bare their tax returns?
 
'Condi Wears the Pants Around Here'
"State Department to Brief Obama Staff on Breeches"--headline, Associated Press, March 21
 
Starve the Beast?
"A dire food shortage across North Korea has become so acute it has started to affect the country's elite in the capital, Pyongyang," Sky News reports:Aid agency Good Friends says food rations for some parts of the city have been cut by up to 60%, while others have seen their supplies cut off completely.Only citizens who show absolute loyalty to leader Kim Jong Il and his regime are allowed to live in Pyongyang and are considered better off than their fellow countrymen.But the food situation, which has mostly been felt in rural areas where rations have been suspended since November, has now spread to the city, according to the South Korean aid agency."Even ranking officials have run out of their (rationed) food supply, while a ban on (private) trade is strictly maintained," said an unidentified city official quoted by Good Friends."It is nothing but a death sentence."
 
Blogger Joshua Stanton argues that this grim news may actually be good news:This may be the single most significant event in North Korean history since the invention of blogs, because if it's true, the regime is finished. . . .The regime has contained and survived mass-casualty famine and dissent in the countryside before. A severe downturn in Pyongyang, however, is a game-changer. If the regime can't even feed its elite, it's going to have to take some chairs away from the banquet table. That means commissars and apparatchiks will shiv each other for the remaining chairs as though their lives depend on it. A rumored phase-out of the "military first" policy introduces a whole new pool of potential coup plotters. This could be the beginning of the end. If the report is true--and if China doesn't execute an Olympic-sized airlift to reverse those conditions fast--there's a 70% chance of regime collapse within the next year.
 
It's a bit awkward to root for starvation on humanitarian grounds, so let's add this Stanton point: If North Korea asks for food aid, "we should agree, as long as the World Food Program can distribute the food through its own distribution system to every single county, village, Army barracks, and concentration camp. No exceptions."
 
Metaphor Alert

"We hit the ground running. We're at the bottom of the food chain but . . . we have really made a dent up here."--Sen. Jim Webb (D., Va.) on his time in the Senate so far, quoted in the Washington Post, March 21
 
Zero-Tolerance Watch
"A woman dropping off her nephew at an elementary school yesterday morning triggered a security lockdown at three local schools after she went inside to use the bathroom," the New Hampshire Union Leader reports from Pelham:When school officials didn't recognize the 40-year-old woman, they called police at 8:05 a.m. and went into lockdown before classes began, police said.The woman exited the building to avoid police because she was driving with a suspended license."She ended up going out one of the side exits and headed to the high school," Pelham police Lt. Gary Fisher said.After searching the Pelham Elementary School building and realizing that the woman had probably left already, police took measures to lock down the nearby middle school and high school campuses before the woman was found at the high school. . . .Fisher commended school officials for quickly calling police."They acted very accordingly and contacted us appropriately," Fisher said.
 
Now of course it's easy to make fun of an incident like this, and it's probably true that for every 10,000 (or some other large random number) incidents like this, there is one in which an actual act of violence could have been averted if someone had been quicker to sound an alarm.
 
Still, does every one of these stories have to end with a quote like that one from Fisher? Would it kill a cop or school official to acknowledge the obvious? Yeah, this was a silly overreaction, but better safe than sorry.
 
His Shirt's Nothing Special Either
"Ex-Gophers Assistant Has His Suit Dismissed"--headline, Star Tribune (Minneapolis), March 20
 
If Only She Had the Combination
"Missing Elderly Woman Found Safe"--headline, News8Austin.com, March 21
 
No Wonder Their Rugs Are So Big
"Tibet Looms Large as Taiwan Prepares to Vote"--headline, CNN.com, March 21
 
You Can Say That Again!
"Ex-Homecoming Queen Accused of Beating Sister With Leg in Trailer Sent to Rehab"--headline, WTAE-TV Web site (Pittsburgh), March 19
 
News You Can Use
"Study: Men Want Raw Meat, Women Want Yogurt"--headline, WDSU-TV Web site (New Orleans), March 20
 
Bottom Stories of the Day• "ZZ Top Gets Busy on First Album Since 2003"--headline, Reuters, March 20
 
• "Hagel Hints Iraq War Is One of the Biggest 'Blunders' "--headline, Chicago Sun-Times, March 20
 
Seeking Asylum
The Associated Press reports on a kerfuffle in West Virginia over an institution known as the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum. As you might guess, the name is what is at issue. Here is the case against the name:"It's like turning back the clock to a time we don't want to go back to," said Ann McDaniel, executive director of the Statewide Independent Living Council, one of several mental health advocacy groups to object. "I think they could still do what they want to do without being offensive."Scott Miller, director of Mountain State Direct Action Center, said one former patient burst into tears after seeing the name on a sign."It's not just that I'm a liberal and I think it's not a good idea; it's seeing people physically hurt," he said. "That's about all I needed to know."
 
The only thing is, the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum is a hospital with no patients. According to the AP, it "once housed more than 2,000 patients but has stood largely silent since 1994." It is a National Historic Landmark, where its owners, the Jordan family, conduct tours. The AP quotes a member of the family, Rebecca Jordan, making the pro-"Lunatic Asylum" case:"This part of history is vital, and you cannot bury what you don't like," she said. "Should we take down the Holocaust museum? Should we completely deny all that happened because it's not favorable? Because it might hurt a few feelings?"
 
So on the one hand, we have advocates getting upset about a name that is insensitive to patients who don't exist. On the other, we have the owner of the place likening something or other to the Holocaust. Does it strike anyone else that both sides are a little nuts?